Wisconsin native, conservative critic of everything.
"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God." ---G K Chesterton
"The only objective of Liberty is Life" --G K Chesterton
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions" --G K Chesterton
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling

Sunday, September 30, 2012

...Steve gave this week’s Green Weenie award to Matt Damon for the anti-fracking movie Promised Land,
which, it turns out, was financed by the United Arab Emirates. Who,
trust me, acted out of a noble concern for the environment and had no
thought of suppressing American fossil fuel development which would
compete with the Emirates’ product and likely cost the Emirates billions
of dollars.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

...The soldier that wrote this letter goes on to note that the Obama
Administration has confined our men to their combat outposts (COPs) and
Forward Operation Bases (FOBs). The country has been conceded to the Taliban on orders from the Obama Administration.

Worse, our feckless Commander in Chief has
effectively abandoned our soldiers in-country, with no mission, no
mobility, and no supporting firepower. The Close Air Support wing of
America’s combined arms doctrine—which has saved countless lives—has
been done away with in an entirely political move. He has made our
military sitting ducks,...

The White House moved to prevent defense and other government
contractors from issuing mass layoff notices in anticipation of
sequestration, even going so far to say that the contracting agencies
would cover any potential litigation costs or employee compensation
costs that could follow.

See, the WARN Act (a Federal law) requires employers to send a 60-day notice of impending layoffs. Since Obozo and his Senate could not come to terms on a budget, there will be a large cut to DoD spending, including cuts in procurement.

So under the WARN Act, many firms MUST give notice.

But, of course, this would interfere with the campaign of B. Hussein Teh Won, His Obozoness, piss be upon him.

So the SCOAMF's Department of Labor issued "guidelines" telling military contractors to IGNORE the law. Some of them decided that they would ignore the Scofflaw-in-Chief.

So the Office of Management and Budget went a step further in guidance issued late Friday afternoon.
If an agency terminates or modifies a contract, and the contractor must
close a plant or lay off workers en masse, the company could treat
employee compensation costs for WARN Act liability, attorneys’ fees and
other litigation costs as allowable costs to be covered by the
contracting agency—so long as the contractor has followed a course of
action consistent with the Labor Department’s guidance. The legal fees
would be covered regardless of the outcome of the litigation, according
to the OMB guidance issued by Daniel Werfel, controller of the Office of
Federal Financial Management, and Joseph Jordan, the Administrator for
Federal Procurement Policy

IOW, the U S military (read: taxpayers) will pay for all the lawyering (and damages awarded) if the contractor breaks the law for the benefit of the Scofflaw-in-Chief.

One thing Obozo thinks he has going for him is prophesy. Steyn noticed that, too.

One of the reasons why Barack Obama is regarded as the greatest orator
of our age is that he's always banging on about some other age yet to
come – e.g., the Future!

...And so it was with President Obama's usual visionary, inspiring, historic, etc, address to the U.N. General Assembly...If I understand correctly the cumulative vision of the speech, the
future will belong to gay feminist ecumenical Muslims. You can take that
to the bank. But make no mistake, as he would say, and in fact did: "We
face a choice between the promise of the future or the prisons of the
past, and we cannot afford to get it wrong." Because if we do, we could
spend our future living in the prisons of the past, which we forgot to
demolish in the present for breach of wheelchair-accessibility codes.

Well. There's a reason for Presidential Futureology, of course. It's the miserable, godawful, horrific PRESENT that he presides over--and doesn't want to mention. Median income down $5,000.00 or so, more food-stamp dependents than ever before, 16%++ real unemployment, and the biggest tax increase in history scheduled to nuke what remains of the economy coming in 90 days or so. Not to mention his biggest achievement: the addition of $4Trillion or so to the national debt in only 3+ years.

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal
application, unchanging and everlasting.... It is a sin to try to alter
this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and
it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its
obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves
for an expounder or interpreter of it.... And there will not be
different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the
future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all
nations and at all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that
is, God, over us all, for he is the author of his law, its promulgator,
and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself
and denying his human nature....

...and later,

...our founding fathers believed in what the Declaration of Independence
called “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Our founders appealed
to universal principles and natural rights that colonial Americans
believed were being violated by British rule. They understood that there
are objective principles of right and wrong, justice and injustice
governing even the highest human authorities. As Martin Luther King, Jr.
would later note, they understood that human law stands under the
judgment of natural law and that human laws that fail to meet the
standards of natural justice lack the power of just laws to bind in
conscience.

The Wisconsin PSC understands its mission, after some prompting by Rick Esenberg.

...The Commission declined to rule today that the construction of the
streetcar project is a proper exercise of the City’s police power,
setting that issue for a later hearing. More importantly, however, the
Commission held that even if the streetcar project is a proper exercise
of the City’s power, the City cannot impose all of the relocation costs
on the utilities that will be affected. Only those costs that the
Commission finds to be “reasonable” can be shifted to the utilities.

The
Chairman of the Commission particularly noted that the Commission’s
duty is to protect Wisconsin’s utility ratepayers, and expressed serious
reservations that it would be appropriate for the City to pass on
millions of dollars in costs to Southeastern Wisconsin utility
ratepayers who will receive no benefit from the City’s project. The
Commission rejected the City’s contention that it had no jurisdiction to
decide the cost issue, and said that it would hold a hearing to
determine what costs it would permit the City to pass on to the
utilities and their ratepayers.--Warrior quoting WILL

No question about it. Let TommyChooChoo take up a collection if he wants his train.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

...During the past two years, there has also been an increase in the number
of pen register and trap and trace orders targeting email and network
communications data. While this type of Internet surveillance tool
remains relatively rare, its use is increasing exponentially. The number
of authorizations the Justice Department received to use these devices
on individuals’ email and network data increased 361% between 2009 and
2011.

Note well, (D) trolls, that this is the Obama Administration. "Mr. ConLaw" himself...

And yes, it's worse than that.

...Because the existing reporting requirements apply only to surveillance
performed by the Department of Justice, we have no idea of how or to
what extent these surveillance powers are being used by other law
enforcement agencies, such as the Secret Service, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, or state and local police. As a result, the reports
likely reveal only a small portion of the use of this surveillance
power.

And you thought that the "Statist" remarks were just exaggerated paranoia?

The government cut its calculation of U.S. growth in the second quarter
to 1.3% from 1.7% in its third and final review, citing less consumer
spending and business investment than previously estimated. Consumer
spending rose 1.5% in the previous quarter instead of 1.7% as initially
forecast. And business investment, excluding residential housing, was
revised down to a 3.6% increase from 4.2%

Russell Kirk addresses both the Limbaughian "exceptionalists" and the Obamian hedonist/statists, but mostly those who believe in 'scientism.'

...So it has come to pass, here in the closing years of the
twentieth century. With the weakening of the moral order, “Things fall apart;
mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. . . .” The Hellenic and the Roman
cultures went down to dusty death after this fashion. What may be done to
achieve reinvigoration?

Some well-meaning folk talk of a “civil religion,” a kind of
cult of patriotism, founded upon a myth of national virtue and upon veneration
of certain historic documents, together with a utilitarian morality. But such
experiments of a secular character never have functioned satisfactorily; and it
scarcely is necessary for me to point out the perils of such an artificial
creed, bound up with nationalism: the example of the ideology of the National
Socialist Party in Germany,
half a century ago, may suffice. Worship of the state, or of the national
commonwealth, is no healthy substitute for communion with transcendent love and
wisdom....

...and proposes an answer to the implicit question:

...the culture can be renewed only if the cult is
renewed; and faith in divine power cannot be summoned up merely when that is
found expedient. Faith no longer works wonders among us: one has but to glance
at the typical church built nowadays, ugly and shoddy, to discern how
architecture no longer is nurtured by the religious imagination. It is so in
nearly all the works of twentieth-century civilization: the modern mind has
been secularized so thoroughly that “culture” is assumed by most people to have
no connection with the love of God....

...How are we to account for this widespread decay of the
religious impulse? It appears that the principal cause of the loss of the idea
of the holy is the attitude called “scientism” - that is, the popular notion
that the revelations of natural science, over the past century and a half or
two centuries, somehow have proved that men and women are naked apes; that the
ends of existence are production and consumption; that happiness is the
gratification of sensual impulses; and that concepts of the resurrection of the
flesh and the life everlasting are mere exploded superstitions. Upon these
scientistic assumptions, public schooling in America is founded nowadays, implicitly.

C S Lewis (The Abolition of Man) noticed it.

This view of the human condition has been called - by C. S.
Lewis, in particular - reductionism:
it reduces human beings almost to mindlessness; it denies the
existence of the soul. Reductionism has become almost an ideology. It is
scientistic, but not scientific: for it is a far cry from the understanding of
matter and energy that one finds in the addresses of Nobel prize winners in
physics, say. Popular notions of “what science says” are archaic, reflecting
the assertions of the scientists of the middle of the nineteenth century; such
views are a world away from the writings of Stanley Jaki, the cosmologist and
historian of science, who was awarded in 1987 the Templeton Prize for Progress
in Religion

The societal/political results were detailed by Solzhenitsyn--but not only in his Gulag. His writing on Western society has been studiously ignored by the faux-conservatives AND the dedicated Left.

We are not trying to make excuses for the fiscal excesses of the Bush
administration — and Congress — in the last decade. But at some point, a
president has to take ownership of his own actions.

Obama
certainly inherited an economic mess, and that accounts for a large part
of the deficit. But Obama pushed for spending increases and tax cuts
that also have contributed in important ways to the nation’s fiscal
deterioration. He certainly could argue that these were necessary and
important steps to take, but he can’t blithely suggest that 90 percent
of the current deficit “is as a consequence” of his predecessor’s
policies — and not his own.

As for the citing of the discredited
MarketWatch column, we have repeatedly urged the administration to rely
on estimates from official government agencies, such as the White House
budget office. It is astonishing to see the president repeat this faulty
claim once again, as if it were an established fact.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour
is a Muslim lawyer and a black nationalist who made news in 2008 when
it was revealed that he had been a patron of Barack Obama and had
recommended the latter for admission to Harvard Law School in 1988.

Before becoming a Muslim, al-Mansour in the 1960s was named Don
Warden. He was deeply involved in San Francisco Bay Area racial politics
as founder of a group called the African American Association. A close
personal adviser to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, al-Mansour helped the
pair establish the Black Panther Party but later broke with them when
they entered coalitions with white radical groups.

Ayers, al-Mansour, and the professional babykillers of Planned Parenthood.

Since Obama took office, according to the [Sentier Research] report,
household incomes are down more than 8%. And since the economic recovery
began in June of 2009, household incomes have fallen by 5.7%.

"Even though we are technically in an economic recovery,
real median annual household income is having a difficult time
maintaining its present level, much less recovering," said Sentier
co-founder and former Census Bureau official Gordon Green.

These figures come as, Business Insider notes, the Census
Bureau released its annual report showing three million more people were
in poverty in 2011 than 2009, and the “average inflation-adjusted
income for households in the middle 20% is now lower than it's been
since 1995.”

Good ol' Timmy helps his friends! See Timmy help. See Timmy flush tax dollars into the toilet!!

Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, acted to shield Citigroup’s
bondholders and management from accountability at the height of the
financial crisis while taxpayers were left on the hook, a former US bank
regulator has alleged.
...Ms Bair claims that Mr Geithner was relentless in his advocacy for
Citi, both in its attempts to buy faltering lenders and when it came to
applying restrictions tied to its various rescue packages by the
government. “Tim seemed to view his job as protecting Citigroup from me,
when he should have been worried about protecting the taxpayers from
Citi,” Ms Bair wrote of Mr Geithner, who she nicknamed the “bail-outer
in chief” of the 2008 crisis. --AOSHQ quoting FT

Bair is not a lightweight; her complaint should be taken seriously.

That isn't all. Bair flat-out opposed Pandit as President of Citi, too. But Bobby Rubin (pal of Democrats) prevailed....

But commission members estimated last week that would be $8.7 billion
short of what is needed to maintain existing transportation facilities
and complete projects the state is already committed to carrying out,
Gottlieb said. State highways alone account for about $6 billion of that
shortfall...

We have yet to be informed of the "needs". It's entirely possible that "wants" are listed as "needs."

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The union/lefty bunch which calls itself "Know Your Care Wisconsin" has a large problem: the reality of ObozoCare.

...it turns out that family premiums have increased by more than $3,000
since Obama's vow, according to the latest annual Kaiser Family
Foundation employee health benefits survey.

...premiums climbed faster in Obama's four years than they did in the previous four under President Bush, the survey data show.

And that's just the beginning!

...the law piles on new coverage mandates. It requires insurance companies
to provide 100% coverage for various types of preventive care, bans
lifetime coverage limits, extends parents' coverage to offspring up to
26 years old, and requires plans to meet certain "medical loss ratios."
Coming up are rules on "essential standard benefits," limits on
deductibles, bans on annual spending caps, and much more.

Let's look again at the wisdom and sagacity of KYCW:

"If you expand the pool of
the insured, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, it makes good
business sense..."

Among the more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from the city
after the assault on the American mission and a nearby annex were about
a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors, who played a crucial role in
conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of armed
militant groups in and around the city.

“It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss,” said one American official who
has served in Libya and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because
the F.B.I. is still investigating the attack. “We got our eyes poked
out.”

The Stuttering Clusterfuck Of A Miserable Failure is so GOOD at speeches, though. So good that the US didn't need any 'security' around Benghazi. Nope.

Leon Burzynski is a retired member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)

Bonnie Greasby is a retired American Federation of Teachers (AFT) member

Joanne Bruch was a member of and a staff representative for the International Union of Electronic Workers (IUE)

George McKinney was an employee of Unit Drop Forge Company in West
Allis. He has been an active member of the UAW for over 35 years

Darold "Dode" Lower has been actively involved in the labor movement
since the 1970's when he was the Vice President of AFSCME Local 284 in
Eau Claire

Worth knowing when you see stuff like this:

Know Your Care Wisconsin, based in Madison, travels the state to educate people about the law.“When
you hear a politician say they are cutting benefits as a result of
this, that is dishonest,” said Billy Feitlinger, executive director of
the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans. “If you expand the pool of
the insured, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, it makes good
business sense.

....only if you don't include the $1Trillion in tax-money offsets, BillyBob.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

“There was this private narrative you see in the intelligence
community where they separate what happened in Libya from this YouTube
clip and then you have this public narrative that you have from this
administration.

And I got a hold of this Homeland Security
Assessment. It talks about the scope of the demonstrations in the first
week after 9-11 and what’s interesting to me is that this intelligence
document makes no mention of the YouTube clip. So again, that’s sort of
the private narrative but the public narrative from this administration
has been that the clip has really prompted the assault not only in Libya
but elsewhere in the Middle East.” --Gateway quoting FoxNews

It's one thing to fabricate stories which protect troop movements, national security, yadayada.

It's another thing entirely to fabricate stories for political purposes, whether domestic OR international. But then, "political purposes" are all that Obozo is now or ever has been concerned about.

...After Holmes' opinions in the Schenck trilogy, the law of the
United States was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison
under the Espionage Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a
way that "obstructed" conscription, which might mean as little as
convincing people to write and march and petition against it. This is
the context of the "fire in a theater" quote that people so love to
brandish to justify censorship.

No surprise that Holmes--revered by the Left--was also a Statist jerk.

...Holmes blurred the line between what the government should be able to
prevent (speakers urging listeners to imminent lawbreaking, like riots)
and what it would merely like to prevent (loss of support for the war).
Similarly, Chayes and her ilk blur the line between what the government
should be able to prevent (speech intended to incite, and likely to
incite, people to imminent lawbreaking), what it would like to prevent
(violence by mobs, whether actually motivated by insulting videos or
whether manipulated by forces using those videos) and what it should not
be able to prevent (expressions of opinion which might offend someone
and be used as an excuse for violence).

...The primary and exclusive aim of the liturgy is not the expression of
the individual's reverence and worship for God. It is not even concerned
with the awakening, formation, and sanctification of the individual
soul as such. Nor does the onus of liturgical action and prayer rest
with the individual. It does not even rest with the collective groups,
composed of numerous individuals, who periodically achieve a limited and
intermittent unity in their capacity as the congregation of a church.
The liturgical entity consists rather of the united body of the faithful
as such - the Church - a body which infinitely outnumbers the mere
congregation.

By and by, he gets to senses.

...You may be familiar with the old adage that the eye is the gateway to
the soul. I have always found this a particularly persuasive idea, for
it recognizes the fundamental fact that there is something deep within
each of us that responds to beauty. ...the liturgy is not solely visual, but rather engages all the senses, and
in the same way it is not only corporeal but it also has an irreducible
spiritual element. The liturgy therefore heightens in us an awareness
of the intrinsic relationship between beauty and truth, just as it is,
of its nature, constituted of these elements and should clearly become a
vehicle for them when we celebrate it.

Central to the Christian revelation is the teaching that ‘faith comes
from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ’ (Romans 10,17). In
that sense, it is not only the eye which is the gateway to heaven, but
in a very real way, the ear too
.

...which brings him to music, specifically music for worship:

...liturgical chant is first and foremost cantillation, a song which arises
from the text, a song which is essentially a heightened proclamation of
a verbal message and which takes its emphases from the natural
accentuation of the text and finds its melodic rhythm from the cadence
which is already within the words.

OK. That's very solid ground. So what happened? Was it "Vatican Two"?

[By roughly 1965] the Pastoral Liturgical Movement, as it had become, had largely
abandoned the principles which motivated Dom Guéranger and the renewal
he initiated, in favour of influences which are more broadly ecumenical
and introduce into the Roman Liturgy elements which are more commonly
found outside the Catholic Church. Nowhere was this influence more
keenly felt than in the realm of liturgical music, for the principle
that a repertoire of liturgical chant which had been proper to the Mass,
at least in its most solemn celebrations, was largely and almost
universally set aside in preference for music which might be most
accurately described as ‘non-liturgical’ in character, given its
frequent lack of dependence on liturgical or biblical texts and its
introduction into our liturgical celebrations of a voice which is in
many ways alien to the spirit of the liturgy.

This is the modern-day inheritance of the ‘Low-Mass’ culture which
envisages a largely spoken liturgy punctuated at key moments by
congregational singing.

IOW, it was long, long, before VatII that all this stuff started. And he's not gentle in condemnation:

...If it is true that the past forty years have established something of a
hermeneutic of discontinuity with regard to liturgical chant, to the
extent that our authentic and most ancient tradition is widely seen as
alien and unfamiliar and musical genres previously unthinkable in a
liturgical context are commonly considered acceptable and even
desirable, then we have truly lived through the most extraordinary
revolution which has impoverished our understanding of the mystery we
celebrate to the same extent as it has decimated the number of our
people who regularly participate in the celebration of the Mass.

Put another way: if there's nothing particularly special about the Mass, why go?

The essay is not nuanced; one could spend an entire four-year education on the topic(s) he addresses. But the liturgical movement begun by Guardini is renascent today, for good reason.

Romney suggested that 47% of the population is "dependent". Obama stated that "You didn't build that."

Hmmmmm. For this analysis, we won't even bother with the 'qualifying' remarks made hastily by each campaign's spinner(s). We don't have to.

According to this pundit, Romney had pulled out the pre-1965 Republican line: bashing welfare recipients. Unfortunately for him, both the WSJ and National Review had changed that line, for very good reason: it includes SocSec and Medicare recipients, along with genuinely disabled/incapable folks. Not only do SocSec/Medicare recipients think--rightfully--that they earned their benefits; many of them are working in addition to getting the bennies. Unemployment compensation is what it is; not many of the recipients are happy about getting it, and it's usually temporary.

(I recognize, as does anyone with common sense, that there are abusers in all sorts of programs. We can argue politely about degree, but not substance.)

Romney's remark was pretty damn dumb. He may call it "inarticulate," or "inartful," or "not well-phrased." It's still pretty damn dumb.

Obama's remark is different in kind. He placed Government before individual initiative; it is his belief that Gummint is the necessary pre-requisite to 'success,' whether that Gummint built a road, or bridge, or schoolhouse...whatever. It was not only damn dumb, it was wrong. Taxes, drawn from individuals with (or without) individual initiative, are prior to Government, or at least are the sine qua non thereof.

Both of these turkeys managed to insult a bunch of Americans. But only Obama was wholly wrong on the premise. Romney was partly wrong.

Right on schedule, some reporter found some "experts" who opine that the stupid movie is not 'protected speech'. But they manage to ignore something very important.

While many 1st Amendment scholars defend the right of the filmmakers to
produce this film, arguing that the ensuing violence was not
sufficiently imminent, I spoke to several experts who said the trailer
may well fall outside constitutional guarantees of free speech. "Based
on my understanding of the events," 1st Amendment authority Anthony
Lewis said in an interview Thursday, "I think this meets the imminence
standard."

Oh?

...words don't have to urge people to commit violence in order to be
subject to limits, says Lewis. "If the result is violence, and that
violence was intended, then it meets the standard."

...The point is to emphasize that U.S. law makes a distinction between
speech that is simply offensive and speech that is deliberately tailored
to put lives and property at immediate risk. Especially in the
heightened volatility of today's Middle East, such provocation is
certainly irresponsible --CMR quoting Chayes/LATimes

The proposition here is that speech should be limited if it puts 'lives and property at risk'--which may be correct. However, if that 'risk' is contingent on the activity of counter-provacateurs, is that 'risk' "deliberately tailored"?

The Obozo apologists (Lewis of the NYSlimes among them) don't like logic, of course. It impairs their intended course of action. Eliminating the middle-man--the Muslim provacateurs--makes it easy. Not a correct formulation, but hey! It works..

By the way, Chaves manages to lump "Christians" with Muslim rabble-rousers. Nice.

"It is, I think, self-evident that
what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack," White House spokesman
Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One Thursday. "Our embassy was
attacked violently and the result was four deaths of American officials.
So, again, that's self evident." --JOM quoting CBS News

But they're still in denial of what the Libyan Government told us.

...Matthew Olsen, director of the National
Counterterrorism Center, told senators that the United States doesn't
have specific intelligence that the attack was planned in advance,
Reuters reports....

Yah, those RPG's were just laying around, ya' know, and the terrorists just happened across the "safe house" used by the (now-dead) Ambassador....

Hold on to your hats. Obozo and the DamnFool Congress are going to obliterate your savings.

Options traders are paying record
prices to protect against swings in long-term U.S. Treasuries
relative to stocks amid concern inflation will accelerate.

...The Treasuries fund, which includes bonds maturing in 20
years or more, fell the most since July 2009 last week, while
U.S. equities rallied after the Federal Reserve pledged to keep
monetary policy accommodative even when the economy strengthens,
increasing inflation concerns.

Friday, September 21, 2012

...In a process Dane County Board member Dave Wiganowsky described as
“flying faster than the Concord,” 22 board members signed a petition
asking Dane County Executive Joe Parisi and the board’s Personnel and
Finance Committee to “begin as soon as possible to bargain in good faith
with our various bargaining units.”

They weren’t kidding. The petition is dated Sept. 19 — Wednesday. A
little more than 24 hours later the committee was set to vote on a
resolution supporting a one-year contract, through 2015, effectively
extending pre-Act 10 agreements signed off on before the
collective-bargaining reform law went into effect. The full board is
expected to vote on the measure, which appears to have plenty of
support, an hour after the committee meeting.

The board is scurrying like rats before a flashlight, trying to
strike a deal before the clock strikes midnight on Dane County Judge
Juan Colas’ ruling killing key portions of Act 10.

This has to be a galaxy-record short "bargaining time." And it's estimated to be about $2 million cost to Dane County taxpayers.

...HUD runs the majority of the programs, 91. The United States Department
of Agriculture, which also administers farming aid and the nation’s food
stamp program, offers 18 different types of housing assistance as well.
The Internal Revenue Service has 14 programs. The Department of
Treasury offers 8 programs; the Department of Veterans Affairs 7; the
Department of Labor 2; Federal Home Loan Banks 3.

Altogether, 160 programs.

One hundred sixty!

(And what in Hell are IRS' 'housing programs'? Tents for those stripped of their assets by IRS?)

[A.G.] Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma [is so] dedicated [...] to the
principle of “federalism” – the vertical diffusion of power
allowing the states on some subjects to limit the dangerous
centralizing power of the federal government – that he has assigned
a team of attorneys to a separate “office of federalism” devoted
exclusively to fighting abuses by the feds. Within two months, his
team was fighting expensive, overly burdensome, bureaucratic
meddling with small community banks, without proper rulemaking
authority, by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Due to
Pruitt’s efforts, the FDIC backed down.

He's also taking on ObozoCare with a new and different angle. Read the linked story.

[U of Chicago] law student evaluations made available to The Washington Examiner by
the university showed that his popularity then fell steadily.

In 1999, only 23 percent of the students said they would repeat
Obama's racism class. He was the third-lowest-ranked lecturer at the law
school that year. And in 2003, only a third of the student evaluators
recommended his classes.

His classes were small. A spring 1994 class attracted 14 out of a student body of 600; a spring 1996 class drew 13....

Oh, and that "Con Law" crap?

From 1992 until 2004, Obama taught three courses: "Current Issues in
Racism and the Law," "Voting Rights and the Democratic Process," and
"Equal Protection and Substantive Due Process.

....only one of which is remotely 'con law.'

Work habits? Puhleeeze....

Senior lecturers were, however, still expected to participate in
university activities. University of Chicago Law School Senior Lecturer
Richard Epstein told The Washington Examiner that Obama did not do so.Obama, Epstein said, "did the minimal amount of work to get through.
No one remembers him. He was not a participant in luncheons or
workshops. He was here and gone."

“What we’ve seen over the last week, week and a half, is something that
actually we’ve seen in the past, where there is an offensive video or
cartoon directed at the prophet Muhammad,” he said. This “is used as an
excuse by some to carry out inexcusable violent acts directed at
Westerners or Americans.”

Yes, we all know that "the video" was NOT the cause of the riots and murders.

More interesting is SCOAMF's use of the phrase highlighted in red.

When he speaks of Jesus, he does not say "Jesus, Son of God", or "Jesus Christ, Savior of the World." He doesn't do that because it is not natural to do so in common discourse.

Nor is it natural to say 'prophet' before 'Mahomet' in common discourse--at least in America.

...Using official government sources, the National Federation of Independent Business
calculates there are more than 4,000 federal rules in the pipeline, and
that just the 13 biggest ones would, if imposed in an Obama second
term, cost businesses a total of more than $515 billion over four years.

That tally doesn't include more than 100 still-to-be-written
regulations needed to enforce the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, or
the mountain of regulations required by ObamaCare. The health law has
already resulted in thousands of pages of rules, including 18 pages
simply to define what a "full-time employee" is.

...Letterman, to his credit, went on to ask Obama how much the national
debt actually is. Obama evidently knew that if he said $16 trillion his
audience would be horrified, so, incredibly, he pretended not to know!

Sure. The dog ate his notes, too.

That, by the way, followed another humungous lie, also noted at the link.

The best trick that Congress has is to pass legislation which is implemented by regulators. That way, Congress (ALL the bastards) can wash their hands of the results. It's Junkpile Legislation--just toss any old idea into the pile and hope that 1) the public won't notice; and 2) that the regulators can sort it all out.

Federal regulators have missed the statutory deadlines on 145 of the
237 rule-making requirements in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation
bill, according to a top financial-regulation analyst.

After a bill becomes law, it’s up to executive agencies to write
rules implementing the legislation. Dodd-Frank was more than 2000 pages,
and the legislative language was a wonderful mix of complex, vague, and
open-ended. The result is a huge burden on the SEC, the Fed, and other
federal agencies. And they’re not meeting those burdens.

Dodd-Frank, like ObozoCare, is Junkpile Legislation. It cannot work in the real world--but if you don't do whatever it is that Congress intended--you'll go to prison.

...Americans may have doubts about what Congress can do to help repair the
economy – but very few would expect Congress to do something
intentional to drive up the price of our milk, a classic indicator of
economic health and the buying power of the American family.

While these government “quotas” on milk production increase the cost
of milk, and the American people suffer the consequences at the cash
register, excess production will be penalized rather than allowed on to
the market to relieve costs.

"Supply constriction" hits the consumers--but it also hits the small dairy farmer who has to squeeze cash (i.e., "milk") from his herd. Instead, the Feds will be squeezing cash from the small farmer.

It's possible that we could go more Soviet--if only Obozo would grow a big, hairy, moustache.

Bret Baier of Fox News reported that intelligence sources believe that the mastermind of the al Qaeda attack on our Libyan consulate is one Sufyan Ben Qumu.

Uh-huh.

Qumu was released from Guantanamo Bay in 2007 to the Qaddafi-led
Libyan government, on the condition that Libya and the US could reach a
“satisfactory agreement … that allows access to detainee and/or access
to exploited intelligence.”

Yes, that was a Bush move.

But SCOAMF jumped in with both his widdle feets:

...The Obama administration promptly labeled Qumu an “ally of sorts,” according to the New York Times
– that despite the fact that as of 2005, he was known as a “medium to
high risk … likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and
allies.” What made him an ally? According to the Times, that
status change was due to the Obama administration’s “remarkable
turnabout resulting from shifting American policies rather than any
obvious change in Mr. Qumu.” As a leader of the Libyan rebels, head of
the Darnah Brigade, Qumu received support from NATO.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Alpha Natural Resources announced Tuesday its plan to cut the
positions and scale back coal production by 16 million tons annually —
which would result in eight mine closings in Virginia, Pennsylvania and
West Virginia. Four-hundred workers will be laid off immediately, though
the company reportedly may try to re-hire some of the 1,200.

Kevin Crutchfield, the company’s chief executive officer, said the
lay-offs and the closings of the non-union mines are the result a
difficult market in which power plants are switching to abundant,
less-expensive natural gas and “a regulatory environment that’s
aggressively aimed at constraining the use of coal.” --Owens quoting Fox News

Clearly, natgas is a better buy, for the time being. But things have a habit of reverting to the mean, and Obozo's war on coal will prove costly.

Spent some time with a pleasant fellow who had a long career in pharmaceutical sales, calling on doctors to sell products of the drug companies. He retired a few years ago--and very recently has undergone a few procedures himself.

His commentary was interesting.

First off, he mentioned that the practice of medicine has changed. Docs rely much more on charts and computerized diagnosis protocols than the older 'touch and talk' method of diagnosis. And to a noticeable extent, they are being replaced by nurse practitioners and physician's assistants for minor treatment/prescription and data-gathering (respectively).

More germane to his old profession, the mega-hospital/doctor "groups" have banned or severely restricted the pharmaceutical reps from calling on the doctors. The doctors have become revenue-centers, and spending time with pharma-reps is NOT revenue-producing time. The pharma-reps instead are forced to call on the mega-group purchasing officials.

IOW, your doc is a scarce commodity; the time spent with patients and pharma-reps is restricted because that time could be spent with other patients (read: revenue sources). Computer-aided diagnosis, combined with the gradual mission-creep of the NP's and PA's, this will have another effect: the commodification of the practice of medicine.

In every other sector, 'commodification' has led to reduced earnings and/or off-shoring; and in a noticeable number of cases, it has also led to quality problems--some quite severe. Since 'quality' of medicine can have serious effects (like, for example, death or disability), this is an interesting development, no?

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Remember the Democratic National Convention, where Obama’s first term was celebrated primarily for the auto bailout (which the speakers juxtaposed to a dishonest attack on Romney’s support for an auto bailout)?

Well, now Obama is knocking “measures providing subsidies such as grants, loans, forgone government revenue, the provision of goods and services and other incentives contingent upon export performance to automobile and automobile-parts enterprises.”

The Obama administration has sued China in the World Trade Organization over China’s auto subsidies. Seriously.

Mukwonago High School students took a stand today against new federal regulations on portion sizes in school lunches. In a movement that started at Park View Middle School on Friday and resulted in a 46-percent reduction in the number of hot lunches sold, students brown-bagged lunches and avoid the smaller-portioned, higher-priced hot lunches provided by the district.

While District Food Supervisor Pam Harris didn't have figures from today, she estimated about half the students brought brown bag lunches to protest the federal regulations, which are aimed at reducing childhood obesity.

Self-starvation is a disorder in which these kids will not participate.

“Case by case, what judges do and must do is take account of the pitcher and the batter in the legal arena, watch the windup, the throw, the curve, and the delivery and then, where they believe appropriate, move the strike zone,” Walker wrote on Aug. 28 in the University of Illinois Law Review.

Monday, September 17, 2012

An intelligence source on the ground in Libya told Fox News that there was no demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi prior to last week’s attack — challenging the Obama administration’s claims that the assault grew out of a “spontaneous” protest against an anti-Islam film.

“There was no protest and the attacks were not spontaneous,” the source said, adding the attack “was planned and had nothing to do with the movie.”

Nonetheless, the SCOAMF's minions shot from the hip--in complete ignorance of the real events--and declared that there had been 'a demonstration' caused by 'a movie.'

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice official Edward Perez, who is the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, refuses to say that his department won’t attempt to criminalize blasphemy in the future.

We're not fans of blasphemy. It generally betrays ignorance, or at the least, poor breeding.

But this Constitution-thing....it seems that the SCOAMF's Cabinet follows his lead. There is no American value which supercedes his own "values". Those "values" include killing newborns. Odd, eh?

It is possible that only one element of Act 10 is 'un-Constitutional.'

That's good news for taxpayers, folks.

...There is no constitutional requirement that the state government bargain with public employee unions at all. However, once the state government decides to bargain, it may not do so under rules that penalize membership in particular unions. By arguing that Act 10 applies different treatment to public safety unions than it does to more general public employee unions, the plaintiffs have raised legitimate constitutional claims that often have been decided by the courts on very fact-specific grounds. In this regard, Judge Colas’ ruling is neither exceptional nor unprecedented.

No matter the foofoodust pushed out by the Walker Administration, exempting "safety" employees was a mistake. Most actual Conservatives said so when the deal went down.

OK. So Act 11 will further reduce taxpayer liabilities by including public-safety employees.

....the continued rioting undermines, perhaps fatally, one of the underlying premises of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and of his campaign now for reelection: that electing this man president will make the peoples of the world love America and Americans. I make a similar point in my as yet unpublished Sunday Examiner column, which should be accessible here when it goes online. The rioters in Cairo expressly reviled Obama and hailed Osama. They hate America and Americans. They hate our way of life and our freedoms. Obama’s election has made no difference; his campaign bragging about dispatching Osama bin Laden has perhaps got them hating us more. One powerful argument for reelecting him is being refuted by what we see on our television screens.

There's a reason that Judge Kangaroo doesn't like Act 10, and it has nothing to do with "the Constitution."

It has to do with stopping the flow of money from taxpayers to his favorite entity: Gummints.

...The Wisconsin Taxpayer Alliance crunched newly released numbers to show this year’s statewide property tax increase was the smallest since 1997. That’s when the total tax levy dropped 9 percent due to an influx of $1 billion in state funds to buy down school taxes.

For the past 11 years, from 2000 through 2011, net property taxes rose an average of 4.8 percent each year. This year, taxes went up just 0.2 percent.

When you hear "it's complicated", that means that the speaker wants to make it so.

Compare:

A Catholic “may not vote” for a candidate who promotes something intrinsically evil, Morlino said. If both candidates promote something intrinsically evil, the Catholic voter must determine which candidate is promoting the lesser evil, he said.

...The moral calculation in such situations is complicated, Schneck said. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has stated that Catholics may never work to advance an intrinsic evil, he said. Examples include abortion, racism, torture and many others, he said.

But Catholics must use their best judgment about what policies and candidates move the country most quickly toward a desired goal, he said. On abortion, for example, Schneck said he would like to see it outlawed. Yet, when Republicans have controlled both the presidency and Congress, they have not been able to overturn Roe v Wade, he said. So the issue for Schneck becomes a practical one: which candidate’s positions will most quickly reduce the number of abortions?

Item: "promotion" of abortion is not the same as "allowing" abortion. Schneck prefers not to understand English very well--making it "complicated". Obozo clearly promotes abortion. Romney does not, although he is a squish on the matter.

Item: Congress and the President cannot "overturn" a decision of SCOTUS. They might pass legislation which goes against a decision; but as Schneck should know, abortion is a State-level question. That, too, is "complicated" in Schneck's alleged mind. Do the Republicans use the 'States' rights' argument to evade the issue? Yes. Is that "promotion"? No.

Item: Schneck "complicates" the question by converting it to a matter of proportionalism: '...most quickly reduce....abortion' is his method of arriving there. Proportionalism was condemned by John Paul II (and others), including H.E. Morlino.

Question: Why in Hell is Schneck on the payroll of a Catholic institution? To blow foofoodust and smoke, or to suck up a paycheck regardless of his distinctly wrong take?

Sunday, September 16, 2012

An interesting perspective; the author doesn't agree with D'Souza's take on 'Obama the romantic.' Rather, he thinks it's a psychology thaannng.

....Obama is very much a man formed by American culture. He is, in fact, our first therapeutic president. He doesn’t so much have beliefs as critical perspectives, not convictions but instead expertise. He doesn’t confront our enemies, but rather tries to understand them, empathize, and gain their trust—perhaps in order to help overcome their fears and learn how not to hate . . .

Philip Rieff announced the triumph of the therapeutic nearly 50 years ago, so in a way it’s surprising that it took so long for us to have a president like Obama. But now we do, and it does us no good at all to imagine that his mentality comes from alien shores, as D’Souza suggests. On the contrary, Barack Obama strikes me as an intelligent, ambitious, and fully committed representative of the therapeutic American liberalism of our day.

At its worst it’s a smug liberalism that refuses to see itself as an ideology but instead postures as our national (and global!) guidance counselor, which explains why Obama can push for liberal policies while insisting that he is nonpartisan. The therapist, after all, has no “interests,” only “understanding.”

I only wish that Obozo would "understand" that 'friends'/'enemies' thing. And basic economics. And Gummint finance. And the Constitution.

...he’s “become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy.”

There are a few observations one could make about that statement. The first one that comes to mind is that the fellow ought to retire immediately because it's not seemly for a Federal judge to be insane on the record.

...In a Dallas Fed paper released in August, OPEC chief economist William White points out that easy monetary policy favors “senior management of banks in particular.” And even Bernanke himself suggested (as if it was a good thing) that quantitative easing purchases “have been found to be associated with significant declines in the yields on both corporate bonds and MBS.” Translation: the Federal Reserve has made it artificially cheaper for corporations to borrow money and has pushed up the prices of houses (benefiting homeowners but hurting homebuyers).

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought cheap loans allowing businesses to leverage up and juiced housing prices were key parts of what got us into this mess?

You may know that damn near every retirement counselor has counseled that as one approaches retirement, one scales back on equities and purchases bonds instead.

So all those bondholders are now getting a miserly 0.5% (or a comparatively spectacular 1.5% for long-bonds). That's a helluva retirement income. /sarcasm. But the banks can borrow from the Fed at 0.5% or less, and lend at 3.75% and up. Nice work if you can get it.

You'd never know it from MFM coverage, but gasoline prices are historical, too.

...For those that do eat or use vehicles; for the first time in history, national average gas prices for the 2nd week of September were over $4.00. Of course, this is mere transitory market speculators - and is not real money leaving their EBT card....

See, there is NO inflation, and there is NO problem with obtaining petroleum from offshore sources!

As the Diocese of Lincoln celebrates its 125th anniversary, Bishop James D. Conley has been named the region’s ninth bishop by Pope Benedict XVI.

Bp. Bruskewitz, after a little scuffle with some demi-apostates, has accomplished a great deal in Lincoln. Flying under the radar of the usual MSM anti-Catholics, he established a seminary in Lincoln (remarkable, given the population thereof), and welcomed the establishment of ANOTHER seminary--that of the FSSP.

Both have been very successful in producing priests, 'other Christs', which are the One Great Necessity for the Church.

May Bp. Bruskewitz live out his days in peace, fishing in the waters of Northern Wisconsin.

Although our President apparently thinks otherwise, 'Jack Ryan'--the spook and US President of the Clancy novels--knew that in foreign affairs, "co-incidence" does not exist.

By co-incidence, the anniversary of 9/11 produced Obscure-YouTube-Movie-inspired rioting and US citizen deaths in the Middle East. (More accurately, "the movie" is Obama's explanation. He's not able to connect the event with the Bush presidency, I guess). Rioting and violence is also occurring, by co-incidence, in Muslim areas of Africa.

Netanyahu of Israel is convinced that Iran will loose nukes on Israel (and perhaps other countries) in the near future. This causes a concentration of Brit and US warships to materialize in the Straits of Hormuz. By co-incidence, this will increase the price of crude oil in the next week--which will squeeze US and European economies with predictable negative results for those economies and their consumers.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Another downgrade of the US credit rating. More bad economic news on other fronts. Inflation growing. Oil and gasoline prices rising. And our embassies burning all over creation. By any rational standard, this is one of the worst weeks any president has ever had.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Brand-new laptop and desktop computers sold in China contain preinstalled malicious software, which has infected millions of computers around the world, according to an investigation by Microsoft revealed on Thursday.

The malware, embedded in counterfeit versions of Microsoft's Windows OS, is engineered to spy on users and conduct denial-of-service attacks, Microsoft said. It warned that the findings pose fresh questions over the integrity of computer-part supply chains.

Unlike Paul Ryan, Ribble, and what's-his-TV-star from Up Nort' (see below), Senator Ron Johnson will not lay back and enjoy ObozoCare. Nor will he let his constituents be assaulted by SCOAMF & Co without a fight.

...The mechanism for Johnson’s challenge is a Resolution of Disapproval, Senate Joint Resolution 48, a privileged motion authorized by the Congressional Review Act, which empowers Congress to undo regulations promulgated by the executive branch with a majority vote in both chambers, he said.The IRS rule in question pivots on six characters in the law, said Michael Cannon, the director of Health Policy Studies at the Washington-based Cato Institute.

Cannon said the IRS put out the rule in 76 Federal Register 50934 dated Aug. 17, 2011: “a taxpayer is eligible for the credit … if … the taxpayer or a member of the taxpayer’s family enrolled in one or more qualified health plans through an Exchange established under section 1311 or 1321 of the Affordable Care Act.” [Emphasis added.]

The six characters: “or 1321,” are key because section 1321 spells out federally facilitated exchanges, but the actual language of the Affordable Care Act does not authorize federal subsidies or tax credits for participation in a 1321 exchange, he said.

So in effect, IRS re-wrote the law to accommodate SCOAMF's whims and wishes.

But IRS cannot re-write laws--at least, so far.

Hats off to RoJo, and shame on Paul Ryan, Ribble, and What's-His-Name from the TV show.

....permit[s] funding for Planned Parenthood and ObamaCare--including the regulation that took effect on Aug. 1 that will require virtually all health plans in the United States to cover, without fees or co-pay, sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortions.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Well, ya gotta have priorities. The SCOAMF has his, and they really don't include trivia like "terrorist Muslim mob attacks."

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and "lockdown", under which movement is severely restricted.

That's bad enough, but it gets worse:

...Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the "safe house" in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed "safe". Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups...

In the meantime, fund-raising speeches and appearances on late-night TV are NOT endangered.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Obozo's pal-picking history has a pattern: from the 'Choom Gang' to domestic terrorists to foreign insurrectionists, he shows remarkably poor judgment, ain'a?

His friends in Libya--the ones the US freed from Quadafy, are acting out.

The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad

Yesterday's attacks on US Embassies in Egypt and Libya brought ..........crickets...........from Obozo and an "Irony of the Year" statement from the striped-pants dancing monkey brigade:

Clinton reiterates an apology issued earlier today by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo--now deleted--which said: "We condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.""The U.S. deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others," Clinton said. "Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation," she added.

(Ironic because Obozo is trampling all over the First Amendment, not just "hurting feelings" domestically...)

Later, a White House propagandist stated that HRC's mewling 'was not cleared by the White House.'

Boehner will ram through a CR which spends MORE than agreed-upon earlier; doesn't halt the Statist-in-Chief's blatantly illegal work-requirement change, AND allows for a lame-duck session, when the drunkenly irresponsible take the wheel and attempt to jump over cliffs.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Barack Obama told Bob Woodward that he regretted criticizing Paul Ryan at his budget speech last year. Obama said he would not have attacked Paul Ryan if he would have known Ryan was going to attend the speech.

...This preposterous figure is based on the assumption that if GM and Chrysler had gone into normal bankruptcy proceedings, the entire enterprise of automobile manufacturing in the United States would have collapsed — not only at GM and Chrysler but at Ford and foreign transplants such as Toyota and Honda. Not only that, the Democrats’ argument goes, but practically every parts maker, supplier, warehousing agency, and services firm dedicated to the car industry would have collapsed, too. In fact, it is unlikely that even GM or Chrysler would have stopped production during bankruptcy: The assembly lines would have continued rolling, interest and debt payments would have been cut, and — here’s the problem — union contracts would have been renegotiated.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Lower-Paying Jobs Account For Nearly 60% Of The Jobs Added Since The Recession Ended In 2009. “Lower-paying jobs, with median hourly wages from $7.69 to $13.83, accounted for just 21% of the job losses during the recession. But they’ve made up about 58% of the job growth from the end of the recession in late 2009 through early 2012.” --quoting the LATimes

Oh, and those "balanced" tax increases which Obozo favors?

President Obama’s Tax Plan “Would Hurt Small-Business Job Creators In Particular.” “New research, released today by the National Federation of Independent Business, shows that allowing tax relief on the top individual rates to expire will hurt job creation and the economy. The report, published by top accounting firm Ernst & Young, shows raising top individual rates would hurt small-business job creators in particular.” --quoting NFIB